Who should govern synthetic biology? What are the ethical dimensions and visions for its desirable futures? How could we facilitate better and closer collaboration and organization across the disciplines? Synthetic biology - one of a suite of emerging technologies like nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, geoengineering, and others - is considered to be potentially transformative.
There are almost 90,000 units of local government in the United States. There is an extraordinary level of innovations unfolding in cities and counties, but little systematic analysis of these innovations to facilitate exporting to other jurisdictions. The Center for Urban Innovation and the ASU Decision Theater are engaged in a series of projects designed to develop and evaluate innovative practices. CUI and the DT disseminate effective practices to public decision makers in a manner that allows them to improve the quality of governance and service delivery for their citizens.
Climate policy is broken. A huge part of the problem is the way climate change and the policies intended to address it are framed and communicated. Pragmatic and tangible options for tackling climate change are often overlooked in a contentious debate focused on climate change deniers, symbolic actions like opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, and overheated rhetoric about a coming climate apocalypse. This tired narrative seems to have accomplished little beyond breeding cynicism and apathy across a broad swath of the global public.
What are the strategies and motives for research collaborations? Are there differences between "cosmopolitan" and "local" collaborators? What leads to bad or "nightmare" collaborations? What approaches do researchers use in dealing with severe problems? Do men and women choose different approaches in working with collaborators? Focusing on a multiyear research program on the dynamics and effectiveness of academic researchers' research collaborations, the presentation draws from interview and survey data to consider factors that lead to successes and failures.
In an effort to create a more inclusive, sustainable, and integrated public engagement experience, researchers at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU) developed Futurescape City Tours (FCTs). Begun as a pilot in Phoenix in 2012, in 2013 the FCT expanded its scale to include engagements in St. Paul, Portland, Springfield (MA), Edmonton (Canada), and Washington, DC, in addition to Phoenix. In each city, participants, stakeholders, and experts considered the relationship among emerging technologies, urban environments, and sustainability.
In an era of globalization and environmental uncertainty, improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers has become a high priority in agricultural development agenda of policy makers. Yet, conventional processes of implementing development cooperation to assist and aid smallholder farmers has had mixed results over the decades and its efficacy is still in question.
Energy systems are changing rapidly around the world, with increasingly deep consequences for society, the economy, and geopolitics. These transitions demand a new approach to energy policy that extends beyond narrow considerations of technology and cost to encompass the broader societal dimensions of energy change. This talk introduces a new framework for energy policy analysis and implementation built around the concept of socio-energy system design. People literally inhabit energy systems, both existing and future, living, working, and playing amidst energy technologies and markets.
Reports from the National Academy of Engineering have visualized The Engineer of 2020 (2004) and delineated Grand Challenges for Engineering (2008). The reports fall short, however, on plotting a clear course for the new engineer in contributing to the achievement of ethical and socially responsible outcomes.
The perceived future impacts of emerging technologies, including nanotechnology, hinge largely on the conventional risk-benefit paradigm. This paradigm oversimplifies the complexity and inter-linkages between technological innovation and the evolution of urban form. In this "New Tools for Science Policy" seminar, we will offer scenarios as an alternative approach to consider complex socio-technical systems and contemplate the values and forces that underlay different manifestations of urban form.
Policy makers must grapple with the social implications and governance issues surrounding emerging technologies. The August 5, 2013 introduction of the first factory hamburger, made from stem cells in a production facility, followed by its ceremonial consumption, is one well-publicized example. While the cost of the original was over $300,000, estimates are that even using today's technology one could produce factory meat for considerably less, perhaps under $500 per kilogram.